It all sounded like a new me, but how many times have I been fooling myself I wonder. What are new after all are the pains on my body. And that is because I am growing older and older and due to that inevitable natural process of growing each moment closer to death. Which is not the end yet I hear. Yes every day is a new life after a deep sleep of dying to what had just passed; I wake up to a body in a state of growth where decay is more apparent. Decay that pronounced itself with the pains that is perhaps somewhat in reciprocation to nevertheless my own desires, in youthful urgency I greedily satisfied them. With wayward depravity, the grabs of pleasures were excessive but justified I thought. After all they were there for my innocence to taste and savor unto full satisfaction. That too is part and parcel of the knowledge one acquires for ours is a quest to wisdom, as it is to be also that of self-fulfillment. However there are limits and thresholds to be observed too. Not understanding or rather ignoring that pain and pleasure are to be balanced just as meticulously in the well kept accounting of Mother Nature and the One Source we all came from and shall return to at the end. Only difference is my breath they seem to trip up so easily these days and makes me sing out like a new song. Nay not all that new but actually just like another old-fashioned love song. Sigh...so I may forget my pains and remember oh so sweet the pleasures of my dear life, I have had on the way back to the source through that same old kick called death.

Mirrors in the Dark

If ever there are phases in a man's life that are in line with some kind of philosophy or belief I would take up that offered by Ernest Becker in his book, "The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man", that marked as one of the earliest to be based on a comparative, inter-disciplinary surveys of the world's most commonly held beliefs, traditions and religions looked at from the perspective of social sciences and current ideas of humanities. Not to over-simplify Becker, nor to make life more unnecessarily complicated or any other derogatory adjectives to go with it, if I still remember correctly they fall into three major phases: the personal, the social and the spiritual.In some ways I tried to sort out my messy life by giving myself from time to time a reflection on what's going on. It is almost like a soul searching ritual that is also like house keeping of this being what has come to be known as the self. It not only is one of physicality but a body which entails a psyche, an intelligence and also a subtlety that it is a being like a house that needs to re-assessed, re-arranged and renovated to suit our changing selves, in relationship with those around and the world we live in. A world that is changing so fast that one needs to get this housekeeping done more often than before in order to keep up if not to be on the balance, sane, sensitive and un-numbed and not only in a physical way, but also psychological, socio-political, historical, spiritual etc.Many look at one's life not only from one birth that ends in one death, but actually we go through many deaths before finally kicking the biggest kick at last. But before that we are going on continuing shifts and sometimes vertigo inducing spins of unseen turbulences all around. One way to do it is getting out of our presumably stable self via spirits of the liquid kind and other not advisable substances that may lead to abuse and leading to tunnels of diffusing rather than enhancement of our consciousness. Many have lost their way even the gurus of such dare devil ways have often fallen into the dead ends of dissent in soma of ills and a safer bet would still be in time tested traditional methods of transformations. Many of which are still in practice and taught by high realer than real guys. But who knows which is which and where they are?At this stage after making my self-erasure an exercise in exploring time based art, I seek to find the erased self never get completely cleared. The remaining shades and blurred lines and rubbings seem to suggest a recall and at the same time a remake of something new rather than just reproducing what was or had been but to project a new me. A renewal, a recreation and a re-enchantment of what we wanted but was forsaken. Sometimes due to our own weakness if not our inability but also our apathy. Creation of this world not only is coming from that of the beyond, the one and only, but must be completed by our own impetus and input. Not only did God put man on earth to go fishing as one of my good friend used to say but we were put here to help lend a hand at its creation, in fact it should probably start from working on recreating our self, and not only that but also of the world around us as well. And to do it as if this was a new beginning, I thought it best to do them by drawing with colour pencils on paper again.

The first two drawings were begun almost at the same time, "Baptism by Fire" and "Meetings with Remarkable People: Tang Da Wu, Seiji Shimoda, Boris Nieslony, Ray Langenbach. These were the preludes to the self-portraits as i sorted out my demons while going through an intensive time while preparing for the solo exhibition, "Lucid Dreams In The Reverie Of The Realm" at the Singapore Art Museum. One was done in expressionism that came out of the conversation with a blank canvas way we used to do in Sembawang. Drawing was a way to manifest a visual language spontaneously as we put our focus on certain obsessions or dilemma that the inner self was harbouring inside. The revelation in a way help to unload these uncertainties of the psychological states of mind that we were going through. Looking at the images help us to verbalize if not communicate what we found hard to share in other ways with the other. "Baptism by Fire" gave an image of a sufi dancer inside my head dancing on surfaces of fire and water.The other drawing "Meetings with Remarkable People: Tang Da Wu, Seiji Shimoda, Boris Nieslony, Ray Langenbach.", is another series of work that will have performance artists as the subject matter. In this I show the images of my most valued teachers and friends. However the first image I began with was the shadow of an airplane on the water while a horse is racing it on the bank. These were extracted from a video of Night Flight (Vol de Nuit, 1931) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; a 1933 film adaptation directed by Clarence Brown. Antoine St.Exupery was the author of "The Little Prince", a book so charming so true that I treasure to this day. The image of a horse racing with the airplane gives to me a succinct metaphor of what our age is still grappling with. An age steeped in technological advances losing touch with nature. The story of Antoine St.Exupery, as much as he was a poet, artist and writer, at the same time keeping abreast with technological advances of his time, being a well trained pilot who was also a conscientious civilian as one who volunteered his services during the war. That mystery of St. Exupery's dissapearance on his last flights until today seems to be poetic justice to one who upheld both poetry and technology at the same time. If I may say so our world cannot live without poetry and this is an image of the struggles of art and artist in a world excessively governed by technocrats who distrusts the artists. And as for artists who like St.Exupery, may have abilities of the "two cultures", as was discussed by C.P.Snow and his peers, somehow there are contradictions still to be dealt with, hence the image of the horse racing here with the plane's reflection on the water gives more than a call for reconciliation of the contradictions but rather stretches one's idea of reflection as opposed to that of casting shadows like those in Plato's cave.The people who I put my money on in this casino of life are the artists I have found to show me a way of life, upholding the human spirit through poetry and adventurous quests in actions of everyday life that saved me from waddling in the existential futility, hopelessly submitting to the notion that history is all about power, money and fear. Across the bay is the iconic architecture of what i call the "Ark of mamon", the ship in the sky that seems to give many of us an assurance of triumphant hope in the face of the possibility of the great flood to come due to melting of ice-bergs in the age of global warming. At worse we rather abstain from riding as decadence and debaucherous its temptatious image seemed to recall that of a ship of fools.We see Tang Da Wu sitting across and on the grass in front of him are his playing cards, his performance images are in these cards, the risks he believes in and the game which I would rather partake in than those offered in the gambling halls of greed. Art and artists play a social role making decisions based on calculated risks taking as we faced the hard decisions and choices in order to become a creative agent on the less trodden path as much as a gambler does in the casinos. Below we look at Shimoda Seiji, Boris Nieslony and Ray Langenbach, all masters, philosophers, risk takers, in the midst of the performances they are known for. In fact the decision of taking the path of an artist are even riskier than that of gamblers as their rewards are unpredictable or uncertain if not intangible to the point of a necessary yet uncertain level of incoherence is expected to be tolerated in order to go on the chosen path. As if we are on a run way like that of an airplane, or a pair of wings we stole from Icarus and we hope nay we believe will surely take off somehow. And yes it did...somehow.

"Romantic Self-Portraits: Blue Dreamer, Blue Narcissus & Blue Sisyphus"Mythologies are stories we tell ourselves that have significanct characteristics informing us of various hidden aspects in our human consciousness. Through these romantic self-portraits I try to review and confront my inner self without shame nor fear of reactions. In a way that playfully put myself into the mythological distinct persona and find self-identity an overlooked phenomenon whereby we consciously are able to recreate ourselves."Blue Dreamer" show my self in a shirt that look like a strait jacket and yet flowing sleeves looking like petals of a blue flower. However his hands seemed in tied down and in an uncomfortable criss cross with an irrational fear to write or drawer while his hands hold the writing material in hesitation. On his chest is an image of a paradise or utopia that he truely believes and his work is always directed at this as the ideal goal or quest where chivalry still exist to fight the good fight in order to swing the tide towards an ideal world of justice and equaity. I am also drawing them as blue, as this the colour for lucid dreaming.